Tina has spent the weeks following the conclusion of the 23/24 season compiling her, now annual, attendance article.
Well, here we are again. At the time of writing the introduction, I am preparing for the onslaught of my summer season and I’m hoping to get to the end of this article before it starts as it’s going to be a busy one!
I’ve added some small expansions in the overall figures, mainly due to my own curiosity, but I’m of the opinion that the pre-covid figures are still worth inclusion.
Overall, it’s been a great season for the EIHL’s attendances, most teams have had a consistent uptake of folks coming through the doors and half of the teams have managed a double figures percentage increase on the previous season. We’ll get into it further down but there is a notable exception who may perhaps benefit from the coaching change we’ve talked about on recent podcasts
I’ve also expanded the visual aid to the above table, it’s handy for a quick visual determination of the trend of each team’s attendances.
Belfast Giants
I half expected that the Giants would continue to see a build of numbers but, I must admit, I was surprised at how much the increase was this season, they started strong and continued to stay above the previous season’s level even with the small plateau across February and March which coincided with the Giants starting to significantly drop off the pace of the top two.
The balance of attendance by opposition looks way off this season due to me not noticing that Excel has oh-so-helpfully set the baseline higher than zero but, as you can see on closer inspection, every team has seen an increase and is either over the 20,000 mark or much closer to it although the attendances against the Panthers surprised me, I was at the double header and I don’t think I’ve seen that many of us in the building since we won the league over there and yet, the games against the Scottish teams were better attended despite none of them having a double header to boost the away section, the Giants did, however, have a well-attended game against each of them around the festive season. The double header against the Storm probably suffered due to the real-world consequence of being at the lead up to Christmas.
The Giants have again, wisely, managed to avoid too much damage done by Sunday fixtures, of the three they did have, one was part of a healthily attended Devils double header, without this one the Sunday average would have been much lower and the other notable day was the Thursday which was one of the aforementioned festive fixtures against one of the Scottish contingent.
Cardiff Devils
Come on Todd, you cannot tell me now that you’re still happy with the capacity of your arena?
Any month. Any day. Any opposition. 100%. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re looking at the unicorn of attendances.
Move along folks, nothing to see here!
Coventry Blaze
Something had to change, I mean, something has changed but if it hadn’t, I was deeply concerned at how the Blaze were going to dig themselves out of the small pothole they seem to find themselves in, being the only team sporting a minus growth of attendance is not what you want hanging over you. The tragic circumstances they faced don’t appear to have had any bearing either, the season’s attendance was fairly consistent, sadly, it was consistently low.
The feeling that you’re seeing the club do the same thing and expecting different results is familiar, Fife were there recently with the longest tenured EIHL coach that the club seemed to have no interest in parting with, and, as you’ll see below, they perhaps look to have turned a corner now that they have.
But, some of that is going to depend on Kevin Moore and how he opens his account in Coventry, there’s two ways this could go, either some folks are going to come back now that the change they were waiting for has happened, or the results will have to come before the people will, and this second option puts more pressure on the rookie head coach to make a statement from the get-go.
The opposition seems to have more of a balance to it for the Blaze this season, the games against Cardiff aren’t so standout and knowing how Panthers fans travelled, it’s no surprise to see an increase there which was definitely attributed to away support. I suspect this is also similar for Sheffield games, they were travelling well, but for totally different reasons.
Sundays saw a resurgence last season after a brief shift to Saturdays the previous season and the Friday would be a clear indicator of preference (or non-preference as the case may be) if it hadn’t been the last game before Christmas, not a terribly savvy bit of scheduling there.
Dundee Stars
Stars must be pleased at how they’re progressing, it’s steady despite them not bringing any trophies north of the border so the fans must be seeing something they’re on board with and having attended Dundee Ice Arena a couple of times last season, I’ve noticed how much busier it is (and how much longer it takes to get a pint in the period breaks!). They’ve got all the ingredients and they’re mixing them together nicely.
You could be forgiven for thinking that I’d used the same charts for the opposition over the two seasons, they are pretty similar but for each team, they’ve had an increase and, I’m sure I’ll have to mention this again for the other Scottish teams, but it demonstrates how important those rivalry games are.
Something not seen since pre-covid, the Stars fans appear to have demonstrated a clear preference for Saturday games last season, and it probably wouldn’t have taken much to work out that the Wednesday games were boosted by festive rivalry games, two to be exact and both with a 2000+ attendance.
Fife Flyers
I could almost copy and paste what I wrote for the Stars here but with a narrative that is more of relief than unfiltered optimism, I was able to report an improvement last season and I dearly hoped that it was going to continue. It has and, in my opinion, this is in no small part down to the hiring of Tom Coolen.
Todd Dutiaume is a Flyers legend, there’s no room for debate on that but I think it was clear that it was time for a change. Coolen has brought a fresh perspective to the organisation, he’s totally bought into the culture, his media content alone is enough to justify his presence there and this is even before you start to consider the on-ice performances.
Whatever you want to attribute it to, the Flyers had a fairly sharp upturn in attendances this past season and are within touching distance of their pre-pandemic levels, the per-team attendances look suspiciously consistent at first glance but if you look closely, you’ll notice that most are over the next thousand marker up this time around.
The days played is slightly more chaotic due to some festive scheduling but largely the Flyers continue to benefit from having a purpose build rink rather than a multi-purpose arena so are largely able to host games at weekends although curiously, this is the first time since I started doing these articles that the Flyers fanbase have demonstrated any kind of preference for Sunday games, less than half the games played versus Saturday but perhaps something for the organisation to keep an eye on?
Glasgow Clan
It’s been quite the year for the Clan, new ownership, new coaching staff, a key figure installed amongst the media team and somehow, they finished 10th. (Sorry guys, couldn’t resist!)
Despite my jibes, the increase is once again noticeable, the overall attendances were consistently on top of the previous season by month and although the per-team attendances might look like there’s some serious imbalance compared to the previous season, I thought so too at first, it’s just because Excel thinks it’s being clever and has set the baseline at 8000 instead of zero and not having a bunch of clever tools means I have to make more effort than I’ve got time for to rectify and re-do the graphic (I noticed this one before Belfast’s so had to go back and amend that *facepalm*)! This did however prompt me to investigate the obvious dips for Coventry, Guildford and Nottingham, my first guess was the lack of double headers, and I was correct, Coventry and Nottingham didn’t have a double header involving Clan and Guildford did but it was a Friday/Saturday with a home game also scheduled on the Sunday, not sure how keen I would have been to head up for that! it’s so easy because of Dundee and Fife’s proximity to each other to schedule the double headers over in the east and were the Clan struggling I would be tempted to say they were suffering because of that but they’re clearly managing just fine.
The festive Tuesday fixture skews the weekday chart a little but if you consider that the Wednesday fixtures in the season past totalled more than the Sundays in its predecessor, it can go some way to helping to rationalise the perspective and as is more familiar to the likes of me, Friday and Saturday seem to have equal footing in the preferred gameday.
It’ll be interesting to see if there is a similar reaction to the latest new coach this time next year.
Guildford Flames
For the second time, Guildford’s attendances are something of a curiosity. 22/23 was a standout season for them on the ice and the general increase was absolutely expected so it is positive that they’ve seen another increase this last season, albeit not as grand but then again, the season wasn’t as standout and this isn’t where the curiosity sits anyhow. The attendances against Belfast, Cardiff and Nottingham are pretty consistent, although the former two have seen an increase, but the Scottish teams have seen a complete flip and there was a reverse of the Manchester and Sheffield attendances. Cardiff being the standout seems to be logical, and now looks to be a trend, but the Belfast games being second is a head scratcher for me, are the flights particularly cheap or something?
Last year I commented on the potential preference for Saturday games, and I understand that there are some limitations for the Flames due to their rink being where it is but for the third year in a row it’s been slightly ahead and the gap has grown each year, not by much, but enough to warrant some investigation if the Spectrum allow it.
Manchester Storm
Traditionally Manchester have had slow starts to their seasons when it comes to attendance, apparently the fans take a little while to warm up to the team, but this past season there seems to have been a completely different train of thought, they started strong and continued along that vein. Did they know something in advance, because it has to be said, their faith was certainly repaid with a season that raised more than a few eyebrows, Storm hold the honour of being the team with the biggest percentage increase in attendance on the 22/23 season.
The attendance by opposition levels are all pretty impressive, from hovering between 4-5k to all attendances being over the five thousand mark this last season, it’s all positive, and no surprises that the Nottingham and Sheffield games were the best attended, as I’ve already mentioned, both fanbases travelled well, if for completely different reasons.
Festive fixtures aside, the Monday and Tuesday in this case, Saturday appears to have crept ahead as a slight favourite, the previous season saw Saturday as an almost negligible least favourite so from my perspective, it’s something that the Storm organisation need to continue to keep an eye on as it doesn’t indicate any kind of consistent trend.
Nottingham Panthers
While there was an increase in the attendance level for Nottingham, and this is still a good thing, I’m a little surprised that it wasn’t more significant because I felt most games post-incident were really well attended. Perhaps that was just what I wanted to believe. The actual figures clearly don’t demonstrate what I remember and it’s probably fair to say that the steady dip through January to February was a result of the fanbase just simply running out of steam, it was emotional all round.
There’s not much of note to point out on the per-team attendances, the Steelers games being top is nothing out of the ordinary and none of the other attendances were spectacular enough in either direction to provide a talking point.
Obviously with almost no hockey played in November, the schedule was the best that it could have been when play resumed for Nottingham and I’m tempted to not actually read anything into the gameday attendances. The only thing I might be tempted to add is that I personally hope the organisation don’t read too much into the Sunday attendance for last season. I’m not a fan of Sunday games.
Sheffield Steelers
Much like Belfast the previous season, it’s not a surprise that there’s been an overall increase in attendance for Sheffield given the standout trophy run, their pause in play post-incident was met with a very well supported November and despite the levelling off in December and January, their per game average was up by 1000+ over the whole season.
The Nottingham games obviously remain the standout but the Clan and Flames games being so close behind is a definite eyebrow raiser for me and, to soothe my inner geek, the happy accident of both charts having the chart lines in the same place is a simple demonstration that the attendance for all teams was up on the previous season.
Despite being an arena team, Sheffield appeared to have an almost enviable schedule in relation to game days, the vast majority being weekend days and the slight majority of those being Saturdays could have been a factor in the buoyant attendances but I think I’m hanging my hat on the league run to be honest and I probably don’t need to tell you that one of the weekdays was a festive Panthers game.
It’ll be interesting to see if Sheffield can improve on that next season.
In Summary:
Overall, the story of the EIHL’s attendances is overwhelmingly positive, I think it’s clear that most teams have shaken off the pandemic shackles and we’ve seen some much-needed changes over the last season or two from various quarters of the league. The hope now is that this trend continues, as much as we might joke about wanting our respective rivals to have a miserable season, we really do need each other as there aren’t a host of teams waiting in the wings to replace any that fall away so every team we have currently, need to be able to sustain themselves in order for the league, in turn, to also be sustainable.
Once the Blaze have figured out how to get themselves back on track and bring the people back in then we’ll have a full house of positives to look back on, perhaps the new coach will give them enough of a push but, we all know how fickle fans can be and to throw one of the biggest cliches out there, it’s a results-based business, something that every team, and coach, needs to be, and I’m sure they are, acutely aware of.
With this article having taken a few weeks to get from start to finish, an unexpected benefit presented itself from the recent Panthers Q&A with Omar Pacha and Danny Stewart that is relevant here. It was revealed over the course of the evening that the vast majority of the scheduling of fixtures for the upcoming season was done by A.I., it’s been met with some disconcertion throughout the EIHL fanbase and we discussed this on the podcast that we recorded immediately following the aforementioned Q&A. I feel fairly sure that there will be some effect on attendances, the examples that spring to mind is the lack of Belfast double headers and, from a Panthers perspective certainly, the omission of a Scottish double header is definitely an issue. I’m sure the schedule looks similar for other teams and, while I’d love to be wrong, I’m of the opinion that I won’t be able to talk in such positive terms this time next year.
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